Help children receive the nutritional therapy they need!

By: Cindy Baranoski, MS, RDN, LDN – Pediatric Nutrition Therapist

Excellent nutrition is one of the most basic requirements for a child to grow and thrive. A study published by Pediatrics found that diagnosis-specific, structured approaches to nutrition issues among children with developmental disabilities significantly improved energy consumption and nutritional status. Yet, nutrition disorders and compromised nutritional status are very frequent among children with developmental disabilities.

Research shows that as many as 90% of children with a developmental disorder have at least one nutrition risk indicator. Nutrition problems can include failure to thrive, obesity, poor feeding skills, sensory disorders, and gastrointestinal disorders, to name only a few. Individuals with special needs are also more likely to develop co-existing medical conditions that require nutrition interventions.

Thanks to two significant grants from Hanover Township Mental Health Board and Special Kids Foundation, Easter Seals DuPage & Fox Valley can now offer nutrition services for children, regardless of insurance, in areas currently underserved immediately north and west of DuPage County. This includes full financial support for those uninsured, underinsured or on Medicaid; and partial support for those in Early Intervention or with insurance. Children who qualify will receive a nutrition evaluation and follow up nutrition therapy as needed.

Qualifications for children (birth to 21 years of age) to receive this service include:

• Eligible medical diagnosis or identified eating concern  AND

• Resides in one of the selected areas (Zip codes detailed in link)

Easter Seals DuPage & Fox Valley Nutrition Therapy provides care that is difficult to find elsewhere in a community or medical setting. Training and specialties include assisting children with improved oral and digestive tolerance, modifications to help improve growth,  adjusting diet for improved variety, volume and complexity of foods and fluids, balancing the diet of those with food allergies or sensitivities, help with transitioning (off of or onto) a tube feeding, and homemade blenderized formula and diet modifications.

Evaluations are performed at the Center, in the family’s home or community setting. Our goal is to provide optimal nutrition care to children with developmental disabilities through an inter-disciplinary approach, addressing their nutrition risks and disorders and helping them to lead healthier lives.

Please refer parents, other specialists or anyone else with questions about the program to our Nutrition Therapy intake coordinator, Christy Stringini, who can be reached at 630-261-6126 and cstringini@EasterSealsDFVR.org.

Learn more about Easter Seals DuPage & Fox Valley nutritional therapy and feeding clinic at www.eastersealsdfvr.org.

7 Tips for Raising Happy, Healthy Eaters

By: Jessica Drake-Simmons, M.S. CCC-SLP

Eating can be a daily struggle and constant stressor for many families. The eating battles can be a point of looming contention at any given moment in a day.

It is important to keep the ultimate objective in the forefronts of our minds when it comes to feeding our little friends. Our goal is not to get kids to swallow vegetables through teary eyes during dinner tonight. Our goal is to develop children who like a variety of healthy food. We want to raise children who will grow up enjoying nutritious foods, not just viewing them as an obligation.

Photo by Nancy Kerner

There are not quick fixes to turning a selective eater into an adventurous eater overnight. However, with consistent implementation of the following strategies, you will be on your way there!

1. Encourage Food Exploration! Join your child in exploring new or non-preferred foods and make it fun! This may help decrease anxiety caused by new foods. We experience food through our eyes, nose, mouth, and skin prior to tasting a food. Having a hesitant eater experience the temperature and texture of foods smushed between their fingers can be a beneficial step before expecting the child to smush that food between their teeth. Expose your children to foods by letting them touch, smell, kiss, lick and bite the presented foods. Let your child PLAY with their food! Don’t worry about the mess! Food should be a joyful experience. Talk about the food and describe what it looks like how it feels, how it smells and how it tastes. Let your child help you prepare meals. The Kitchn provides ideas for the many simple steps in cooking that even young children can help with!  Learn about food!  Plant a garden.  Visit the farmers market and the grocery store.
2. Make the meal time about being together as a family. Meal time should be a pleasurable experience for everyone and an opportunity to spend quality time with the family. If a child is a part of a joyful low-stress meal experience, he will be more likely to independently consume more of the presented foods.
3. Be positive and supportive but… Beware of rewarding your child by paying a great deal of attention to what the child is NOT doing. When we constantly cheer for our children, we can be reinforcing the pursed lips that are rejecting the airplane spoon. Rather, make a single statement about the action you would like to see occur (e.g.. “Maybe you would like to try giving your apple slice a kiss?” “It would be awesome to see you knock the corn kernels on your teeth!”) and praise the desired behavior after it occurs. Pay little or no attention to the negative behaviors.
4. Don’t force a child to eat! Policing a selective eater’s food consumption fosters negative feelings with the nutritious foods we want them to eat! We want positive and happy feelings associated with meals in order to support healthy eating habits! Letting children be in control of the foods you provide helps them feel calm and promotes a positive experience with the foods. It also allows them to learn to listen to their bodies and be in control of nutritious choices.
5. Offer small portions. If someone put a plate of eel in front of me and told me that this was dinner and I had to eat it or else… AHHH!! No way! I would probably gag at the site. But, if I was encouraged to try just one tiny bite? Well, I could probably do that. Putting a small portion of a new food on your child’s plate will present an obtainable expectation. It may even provide the child with an opportunity to request more!
6. Rotate and repeat! Regardless of whether your child liked the food, repeating the food will build familiarity. Repeated positive exposures to a food can be essential in learning to eat the food. Don’t think of uneaten food as wasted. A small portion of uneaten food on a plate is a valuable learning experience for a hesitant eater.
7. Pair foods together. Present dips and spreads like hummus, peanut butter, ketchup or salad dressing to make non-preferred foods more pleasurable. Pair mealtime favorites like chicken nuggets with a small serving of a new vegetable.

Selective eating can stem from GI issues, food allergies or food intolerance and therefore will require medical attention. If your child is particularly resistant or consumes a limited diet, don’t hesitate to seek guidance from an occupational therapist or speech-language pathologist.

Easter Seals DuPage & Fox Valley offers a feeding clinic which provides an interdisciplinary team consisting of a gastroenterologist, speech-language pathologist, registered dietitian and parent liaison to assess and provide recommendations related to feeding challenges. Contact our Intake Coordinator at 630.261.6287 to ask questions or schedule an appointment.

Here are some great resources to make happy and healthy eating obtainable in your home:

• Learn more about nutritious eating from our expert dietitian.
• Sign up for weekly meal plans with easy recipes and shopping lists for school lunches and family meals using wholesome ingredients at 100 Days of Real Food  and Momables.
• Follow Healthy Kids, Easter Seals DuPage Speech Department and My Munch Bug  on Pinterest for fun food ideas and additional education on healthy eating.
• Feeding My Kid is dedicated to helping parents impact their child’s life-long eating habits through tips, videos and recipes.
• The mission of The Doctor Yum Project is to transform the lives of families and communities by providing an understanding of the connection between food and overall health, as well as empowering them with the tools to live a healthy life.

For more information about Easter Seals DuPage & Fox Valley please visit EasterSealsDFVR.org.

Beyond the Nutrition Basics

By, Cindy Baranoski, MS, RDN, LDN

Earlier this month, I provided some introductory nutrition resources and tips for infants to children. Now as we continue to celebrate National Nutrition Month, we will look at the next steps to aid our children’s nutrition needs.

Photo by Nancy Kerner

Seeking the help of a dietitian can be invaluable in helping to determine so many particulars about nutrition, especially if your child has specific needs. A dietitian can help with determining how much nutrition your child actually needs. Typically based on their age, weight, length or stature, sex, and activity, no two children need the same amount of nutrients.

Calories change with weight gain and length growth. They continue to change over time, and what your child needs today will not be the same in a month. Monitoring growth and diet is helpful, especially when your child is not gaining enough weight, or possibly gaining too much. It’s not necessary to count calories, so tools such as SuperTracker are not always necessary.

Using MyPlate Daily Food Plans are an easy way to ensure children are not over or under eating. When in doubt, asking a dietitian for some help can give you the basics on calories so you can monitor them on your own over time.

Protein is similar to calories, and will change with growth and age as well. Most every food contains some protein, and the amount needed is much less than most people would think. If your child is not the best eater, they may be getting enough protein, regardless. A dietitian can help you determine how much is needed, and how much is actually in your child’s diet now. They can also give suggestion on food sources that work for your child.

The government provides guidelines on vitamins and minerals, as well as essential fatty acids, but many conditions can change needs. Some medications interfere with absorption of certain vitamins, while vitamins can interact with some medications. Knowing this information, a dietitian can better guide with changes to help limit the interactions, and allow medications and vitamins do what they do best. Use of a supplement may be needed, and this can be a discussion with the dietitian, about which kind, brand, gummy, liquid, chewable, single nutrient, or multivitamin mineral supplements would be best.

Photo by Lauren Vitiello

Hydration is the last of the overlooked nutrients in the diet, and although most of us think we drink an adequate amount of fluid in a day, most often this is not the case. With infants most of their hydration comes from breast milk or formula, so no added fluid is necessary. With introduction of baby foods, hydration is still achieved as most baby foods are very watery. But as children reduce and eliminate these primary sources of nutrition, they are replaced with solids. Nearly all foods provide fluid, so we do get fluid from foods, but the body has to work to remove the fluid from the molecules it is bound to when the food is more solid in form. Drinking water is the best way to hydrate a body, and as a rule of thumb, drinking half your body weight in water is an achievable goal.

Easter Seals DuPage & Fox Valley offers exceptional Nutritional Therapy for anyone who feels their child is struggling with nutritional development. Our registered Dietitian/Nutritionist will first asses your child’s nutrition and then provided a individualized plan specific to your child’s needs.

Click here to learn more about this great service, or to schedule an appointment, call our intake coordinator at 630.261.6287.

For more information about Easter Seals DuPage & Fox Valley please visit EasterSealsDFVR.org.

Nutrition for Your Children

By, Cindy Baranoski, MS, RDN, LDN

Although March is National Nutrition Month, and March 11 is Registered Dietitian Nutritionist Day, every day of the year is a nutrition celebration.

We eat, drink, or are fed every day, throughout the day, in order for us to survive, grow and thrive. As adults we tend for forget just how important nutrition is for us, unless we are diagnosed with a nutrition related disease, such as diabetes, heart disease or cancer. For children, however, nutrition is the key ingredient in helping them grow and develop into the best they can be.

At Easter Seals DuPage & Fox Valley, parents are learning more and more just how important nutrition is to their child at a very young age, and these parents are becoming very proactive in this area, to the benefit of everyone involved in their child’s world.

Most people have a difficult time even knowing where to begin. Nutrition is a degree that can be earned at all levels, including doctorate degrees. Although the detail and level of understanding to receive a degree is pretty huge, it doesn’t’ take a degree to provide good nutrition for yourself or your child.

How can you even begin to delve into this science of nutrition? Start by keeping it simple. The government has done a lot of research, and MyPlate is one of the easiest websites to find daily food plans, menus, recipes, tips for nutrition, videos, games and more.

MyPlate is the easiest way to know how much food to eat in a day for optimal nutrition. It’s divided into food groups, and one of the easiest tools on this site is the Daily Food Plan. Depending on your child’s age, or if you know a calorie level you are trying to aim for, it will give guidelines on how much to eat from each food group to achieve this goal.

Another resource on MyPlate, is SuperTracker. This resource is easy to use and you can put information into it for analysis of nutrition for you or anyone in your family. It’s not completely accurate, but it is helpful to determine how many calories, protein, vitamins and minerals were included in that diet.

Infants and Toddlers

If your child is an infant, there are limited tools available that tell you what they are supposed to eat or drink every day. However, if you go to Gerber you have an opportunity to access general information or create menus specific for your child.

Based on your child’s developmental level, they may need to only drink formula or breast milk, or they might be ready to start solid foods. Gerber’s website tools are helpful because they are based on development, and not necessarily ages. The website is geared for Gerber products, but the menu system can really be helpful to see 7 days of what your child could be eating or drinking, how many times in the day and how to keep their diet balanced.

Top Ten List  For Nutrition for Children Over 1 Year of Age

1. Keep your child on a schedule as much as possible.
2. Do not allow your child to graze through the day. Most children eat 4-6 meals and snacks each day.
3. If not an infant, offer three meals and 2-3 snacks a day, with 2-3 hours of time separating each of these eating times.
4. Offer water between all meals and snacks.
5. Ensure supported seating with mealtimes; the body should be at 90 degrees at the ankles, knees and hips. Be sure they

   

   Photo by McKenzie Burbach

   don’t fall to the sides in a chair – it should provide support in all directions. The table or tray of their chair should be at a level their shoulders are not too high up and fatigue.

6. Offer a source of protein, vegetable, fruit, grain and dairy at each meal. If they are an infant, this is not a rule.
7. Meals are for nutrition, snacks are for extra food or drink, or an opportunity to practice more challenging foods.
8. Be sure your child is stooling each day. Stools should be soft, easy to pass. Urine should be clear or light in color and often through the day.
9. A good indication your child is receiving enough to eat and drink in the day is how well they sleep at night.
10. When in doubt, speak to your child’s doctor or consult with a dietitian with who has skills with children.

Find a Dietitian in your area at Eat Right.org.

For more information about Easter Seals DuPage & Fox Valley please visit EasterSealsDFVR.org.